Farmers of the Forest in Cages: The Online Trade of Hornbills in the Philippines

The Philippines has a rich hornbill diversity, but many species are found in a restricted range and threatened by habitat loss, hunting for wild meat and cultural objects, and the live bird trade.

This threat is reinforced by the discovery of 143 live hornbills from nine taxa for sale online from 2018-2022, reported in Farmers of the Forest in Cages: The Online Trade of Hornbills in the Philippines.  

While the Luzon Tarictic Hornbill was the most recorded species in the study (73% of all individuals), five Endangered Visayas Tarictic Hornbill Penelopides panini were also offered for sale.  

Two-thirds of traders recorded were in central Luzon and likely sourced wild hornbills within or from nearby provinces, said the report authors.  

Seizure records during the same period showed a further 66 hornbills seized in 24 incidents.  

From a conservation perspective, this situation is very worrying. More than half the endemic hornbills observed in trade were nestlings about to fledge, which means these birds are being targeted for illegal trade when they are most vulnerable"

Emerson Sy, co-author and TRAFFIC Consultant“Illegal trade, both online and offline, will only make things worse for these endemic hornbills which have low reproduction rates and breeding success,” said Serene Chng, TRAFFIC Senior Programme Officer and a co-author of the report.

All online trade data was shared with Facebook, which in turn rapidly removed more than 1,800 Philippine wildlife trade groups between 2020-2022.  

However, as new groups were quickly formed, it became evident that crackdowns must take place consistently and rapidly and go beyond the removal of posts for long-term impact.  

The study found that traders had also developed more inventive and evasive strategies including purposefully using misspelt words, codes, and emojis to avoid being detected by the platform's algorithm.  

The authors urged Facebook to permanently shut down groups involved in illegal wildlife trade, hold administrators of such groups accountable by suspending or deactivating individual accounts, and work with enforcement agencies to break the illegal trade chain.  

As most of the hornbills observed in the study are believed to be wild-sourced and all are protected under national law and CITES¹, a majority of observed trade is suspected to be illegal.  

Appropriate resources should be allocated to the wildlife authorities to conduct in-depth investigations to identify and arrest key wildlife traffickers, suppliers and consumers, the authors said. 

Other recommendations included paying urgent attention to the protection of hornbills onsite to prevent poaching and trafficking and collaboration between conservation groups and wildlife authorities to develop and implement pragmatic hornbill conservation programs, such as nest guarding, in the wild.